What came first, the idea of casting male swans in the corps de ballet or the desire to do Swan Lake?

“Well, I’d only done Nutcracker by that point for Opera North, so I was thinking there’s no point me doing Swan Lake as a contemporary choreographer unless I have an idea that’s different enough from the classical version to justify doing it. “It was always ‘What if the swans were male?’ and ‘What if the Royal Family slightly resembled a modern family we would recognise in more modern times?’.

“By the time I made it in ‘95, the newspapers were full of royal scandal. These days we don’t really get anything like that but back then it was every day, Diana, Fergie and Charles and Camilla all the time; it was all about the difficulties of being in the Royal Family. So a troubled prince didn’t seem so far away from the truth; a prince who couldn’t be with the person he wanted to be with seemed to be a story we could tell.

“Around that time, I was actually walking though St James Park one day and saw the swans there with Buckingham Palace in the background and there was the piece. It was all there.”

Do you consider Swan Lake to be your signature work?

“Well, it is the work I am most known for, obviously, but all my works feel like signature works to me; they all have a lot of me in them.

“But Swan Lake is special because it was the first time I approached something in a really heartfelt way, I suppose. It came from a deeper place in me, where I think a lot of my work before that was more entertaining but not necessarily something that would move you or take you to those sort of places.

“Swan Lake was something I approached very seriously and I think I hit on something new and I started to enjoy moving audiences as well as making them laugh and entertaining them.”

• Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake, Alhambra Theatre, Bradford, Monday to Saturday, 7.30pm, plus Wednesday, 2pm, and Saturday, 2.30pm. Box office: 01274 432000.